name: Vertex AI Model Garden Deploy description: Deploy open models or custom weights to Vertex AI endpoints.

Vertex AI Model Garden Deploy Skill

This skill provides instructions for deploying Open Models from Vertex AI Model Garden to endpoints, and subsequently undeploying them to clean up resources.

1. Prerequisites

Before deploying, ensure you have the correct project and region set. The commands below use placeholder variables PROJECT_ID and LOCATION_ID.

Ensure you are authenticated:

gcloud auth login
gcloud auth application-default login
gcloud config set project $PROJECT_ID`

2. Discovering Deployable Models

You can list models available in Model Garden and check if they can be self-deployed.

gcloud ai model-garden models list

To see what machine types and accelerators are supported for a specific model (e.g., google/gemma3@gemma-3-27b-it):

gcloud ai model-garden models list-deployment-config \
    --model="google/gemma3@gemma-3-27b-it"

[!NOTE] Some models, especially Hugging Face models, might require a Hugging Face Access Token for deployment.

[!TIP] Model Recommendation Instructions: If a user asks to deploy a model but does not specify which one, you should recommend a model based on their use case (e.g., Llama 3.3 70B for general purpose or Gemma 3 for lightweight tasks). * You MUST ensure you are recommending the latest version or popular version of the suggested model family. * You MUST verify the model is currently deployable using gcloud ai model-garden models list before suggesting it to the user.

3. Deploying a Model

[!WARNING] Deploying models, especially large ones, consumes significant compute resources and incurs costs. 1. You MUST refer to Vertex AI prediction pricing to calculate a rough cost estimation based on the requested --machine-type and --accelerator-type (and count). 2. You MUST present this cost estimation to the user and warn them that this is the list price, which may differ from their actual bill due to potential discounts or reservations. 3. You MUST ALWAYS request explicit confirmation from the user agreeing to the estimated cost before executing any deploy command.

To deploy a model, use the deploy command. It is highly recommended to use the --asynchronous flag for long-running deployments, and then poll the status if necessary.

Example: Deploying Gemma 3

Here is a typical bash script to deploy a model. You can run this block directly.

#!/bin/bash
# Example script to deploy a model from Model Garden

PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value project)
LOCATION_ID="us-central1" # Recommended default region
MODEL_ID="google/gemma3@gemma-3-27b-it" # Replace with your chosen model ID

echo "Deploying model $MODEL_ID to project $PROJECT_ID in $LOCATION_ID..."

# Model Garden can automatically select the required hardware based on the list-deployment-config if hardware params are omitted.
# Below is a comprehensive command with all supported parameters:
gcloud ai model-garden models deploy \
    --project=$PROJECT_ID \
    --region=$LOCATION_ID \
    --model=$MODEL_ID \
    --machine-type="g2-standard-48" \
    --accelerator-type="NVIDIA_L4" \
    --accelerator-count=4 \
    --endpoint-display-name="my-gemma-deployment" \
    --hugging-face-access-token="YOUR_HF_TOKEN" \
    --reservation-affinity="reservation-affinity-type=specific-reservation,key=compute.googleapis.com/reservation-name,values=my-reservation" \
    --asynchronous

echo "Deployment initiated asynchronously."
echo "Check the Google Cloud Console (Vertex AI -> Online Prediction) for status."

Example: Deploying Custom Weights

To deploy a model using custom weights, you can use the exact same deploy command. Instead of providing the model garden model ID, provide the Google Cloud Storage (GCS) URI to your custom weights folder in the --model flag.

#!/bin/bash
# Example script to deploy a model with custom weights from a GCS bucket

PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value project)
LOCATION_ID="us-central1"
# Replace with the gs:// URI pointing to your custom weights
MODEL_GCS_URI="gs://your-bucket-name/path/to/custom-weights"

echo "Deploying custom model from $MODEL_GCS_URI to project $PROJECT_ID in $LOCATION_ID..."

gcloud ai model-garden models deploy \
    --project=$PROJECT_ID \
    --region=$LOCATION_ID \
    --model=$MODEL_GCS_URI \
    --machine-type="g2-standard-12" \
    --accelerator-type="NVIDIA_L4" \
    --endpoint-display-name="my-custom-model" \
    --asynchronous

echo "Deployment initiated asynchronously."

4. Checking Deployment Status

When you deploy a model asynchronously using the --asynchronous flag, the deploy command will return an operation ID. You can use this ID to check the ongoing status of the deployment.

gcloud ai operations describe YOUR_OPERATION_ID \
    --region=$LOCATION_ID

[!NOTE] As an agent, you can also offer to check the status of a deployment for the user if they provide an operation ID or if they just initiated the deployment with you.

Alternatively, you can list your endpoints to see if it shows up and check the Cloud Console under the "Online prediction" tab.

gcloud ai endpoints list \
    --region=$LOCATION_ID

Note: Large models (like Llama 3.1 8B or Gemma 27B) may take 15-20 minutes to fully deploy and start serving.

Verifying Deployment

If the model is successfully deployed, verify by making a prediction call to test. Because Model Garden models are often deployed to Dedicated Endpoints, you shouldn't use gcloud ai endpoints predict. Instead, you must fetch the endpoint's dedicated DNS name and send a curl request.

[!TIP] Ask the user to try using their own prompt to see the results. Otherwise use the default.

Use the following script:

#!/bin/bash
PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value project)
LOCATION_ID="us-central1"
ENDPOINT_ID="YOUR_ENDPOINT_ID"
PROMPT=${1:-"Explain quantum computing in simple terms."}

echo "Fetching dedicated Endpoint DNS..."
ENDPOINT_URL=$(gcloud ai endpoints describe $ENDPOINT_ID --project=$PROJECT_ID --region=$LOCATION_ID --format="value(dedicatedEndpointDns)")

if [ -z "$ENDPOINT_URL" ]; then
    echo "Error: Could not retrieve a dedicated endpoint URL. Verify your ENDPOINT_ID."
    exit 1
fi

echo "Sending prediction request to $ENDPOINT_URL..."
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://${ENDPOINT_URL}/v1beta1/projects/${PROJECT_ID}/locations/${LOCATION_ID}/endpoints/${ENDPOINT_ID}/chat/completions" \
  -d '{
    "model": "'"$ENDPOINT_ID"'",
    "messages": [
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "'"$PROMPT"'"
      }
    ]
  }'

5. Undeploying and Cleaning Up

To stop incurring charges, you must undeploy the model from the endpoint. This is a multi-step process if you don't already have the exact endpoint and deployed model IDs.

Example: Finding and Undeploying a Model

Here is a bash script demonstrating how to find the IDs and undeploy the model.

#!/bin/bash
# Example script to undeploy a model

PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value project)
LOCATION_ID="us-central1"
# The model ID used during deployment (without the provider prefix sometimes, or exactly as listed in describe)
# It's usually easier to find the specific ID via `gcloud ai models list`
# For this example, let's assume we know the exact Endpoint ID and Deployed Model ID.

# 1. Find the Endpoint ID
echo "Listing endpoints in $LOCATION_ID:"
gcloud ai endpoints list --project=$PROJECT_ID --region=$LOCATION_ID

# (Assuming you extracted ENDPOINT_ID from the above output)
# ENDPOINT_ID="your_endpoint_id"

# 2. Find the Deployed Model ID
echo "Listing models in $LOCATION_ID to find model description:"
gcloud ai models list --project=$PROJECT_ID --region=$LOCATION_ID

# (Assuming you found the specific MODEL_ID)
# MODEL_ID="your_model_id"
# gcloud ai models describe $MODEL_ID --project=$PROJECT_ID --region=$LOCATION_ID
# (Extract the deployedModelId from the output)
# DEPLOYED_MODEL_ID="your_deployed_model_id"

# 3. Undeploy
# Uncomment and replace the variables below to actually perform the undeployment
# echo "Undeploying model $DEPLOYED_MODEL_ID from endpoint $ENDPOINT_ID..."
# gcloud ai endpoints undeploy-model $ENDPOINT_ID \
#     --project=$PROJECT_ID \
#     --region=$LOCATION_ID \
#     --deployed-model-id=$DEPLOYED_MODEL_ID
#
# echo "Model undeployed."

# 4. Delete Endpoint
# echo "Deleting endpoint $ENDPOINT_ID..."
# gcloud ai endpoints delete $ENDPOINT_ID \
#     --project=$PROJECT_ID \
#     --region=$LOCATION_ID \
#     --quiet
# echo "Endpoint deleted."

# 5. Delete Model
# echo "Deleting model $MODEL_ID..."
# gcloud ai models delete $MODEL_ID \
#     --project=$PROJECT_ID \
#     --region=$LOCATION_ID \
#     --quiet
# echo "Model deleted."

[!WARNING] Failing to undeploy a model will result in continuous charges for the allocated compute resources, even if you are not sending prediction requests. Always clean up after testing.

6. Troubleshooting

Deployment Failure: Quota or Resource Exhausted

If your deployment fails (or stays in an error state) due to QUOTA_EXCEEDED or RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED errors, the specific hardware requested (e.g., NVIDIA_L4 or g2-standard-24) is either not available in your chosen region or exceeds your project's quota limits.

Solution: Look closely at the error message returned. It will often recommend an alternative region or machine type that currently has availability. Ask the user for confirmation to retry the deployment using the suggested --region or --machine-type parameters.

[!WARNING] If the alternative suggestions involve changing the machine type or accelerator, you MUST recalculate the estimated cost using Vertex AI prediction pricing, warn the user about list prices versus actual billing, and get their explicit confirmation for the new cost before retrying the deployment.